Fighting Bad Parenting With Milk

by admin on February 16, 2016

This video has been floating around the internet for a year or so, but I recently just saw it for the first time, and wondered what your reaction to it might be. It’s hard to know the exact details of the encounter since there is no audio, but it seems pretty clear that the mother is doing little to curb her child’s behavior, and at one point appears to even nudge the child on with her hand. The reaction of the other customer is inventive, and many would argue, justified. Comments on the video by viewers seem to strongly support the other customer, though some think it is cruel to do this to a small child, and in fact his/her anger should have been directed at the parent instead. So what, in your opinion, is the proper way to act in such a situation? They say it takes a village to raise a child, so is it appropriate for a villager to step in and correct a misbehaving child when the parent refuses to do so? 0208-16

I’m certain the child haters of the world will think this is a great reaction to a pesky brat. In the video, the child is merely the extension of his parent’s hand since she does little to dissuade the boy to stop what he is doing and by her behavior she appears to condone it. Mom has not taught the child that the pleasures of using a mini cart is coupled with the responsibility to use it correctly, i.e. not slamming into other customers rudely. Because there is no audio, there appears to be some kind of appeal to the mom before he turns back around but we don’t know what was said. We don’t see any action by the customer such as holding the cart from hitting him thus implying that he directly spoke to the child himself to make him stop. Mom does absolutely nothing to take control of the cart from her child which is what she should have done.

So, dumping milk on the head of the child is, in my opinion, a cowardly choice to not directly engage the person most responsible for the child’s behavior.

I pity the child because his mother appears to condone the bad behavior, doing nothing to stop it, but the child has discovered there are unpleasant consequences to actions at the hands of a stranger and that has created a cognitive dissonance in his thinking as to what is right and what is wrong. Bad parenting.

A stern word would have been better. Pouring milk over a child’s head makes a mess on the floor, for some poor supermarket employee to clean up. Plus, that milk hadn’t been paid for yet, so technically, the man was stealing from the store. If the milk had been paid for, he would have been stealing from the boy’s mother, who would have paid for the milk. So, yeah, teaching consequences, and cognitive dissonance, is all well and good, but it should ideally be done in such a way so that the consequences only affect the offender, and not other, unrelated people.

I work at a co-operative grocery, and despite the lack of audio, I can tell you that I’ve dealt with many out-of-control, obnoxious, entitled, loud children and know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of irresponsible parenting. I do not like children; I never have. I will be very upfront and brutally honest about that. No point in mincing words.

However, I am torn. A part of me – as the employee who might have to clean up the mess (for I work the register) – would gladly mop it up while smiling and pay for the milk. In fact, there was a time when one repeat offender hellion was running pell-mell through the store as he always did and took a nasty spill on to the hard floor. He face planted with a loud “twack.” He was completely fine (no serious injuries, just stunned), and it took every ounce of control I had not to grin throughout the rest of the transaction I was conducting (not with the parent but with a concerned customers instead). There are times when I wholeheartedly endorse fighting fire with fire and enjoy seeing a child reap the “rewards” of its bad behavior.

On the other hand, I have met a few children over the past few years – well-behaved, thoughtful, and polite ones – whom I like very much and have almost begun to forgive children as a whole for the past ills they bestowed upon me when I was young. I agree completely that it is the parent who has dropped the ball in this situation (and in most others that include misbehaving children), and it therefore is the parent who should be confronted.

It does take a village (when others’ behaviors negatively affect us directly), but what is the child learning if we, as rational, fully functional adults, retaliate in a childish manner? Nothing. Yet, whether this video is staged or not, I would be disingenuous if I did not admit to some glee watching this child get milk dumped on his head after performing an action that he should know – by his age – not to do.

Wow. My kid would have hit that person with the cart exactly once and then been called on it. Either way, the adult who dumped the milk on the child’s head was in the wrong. You don’t do that to a kid. The thing to do would have been to address the mother’s lack of mothering.

Personally, I don’t buy into this “it takes a village” stuff. I don’t think strangers have any business correcting someone else’s child except in a situation like this, in which case I would have spoken to the mother AND the child, but dumping milk on a kid’s head is over the line. The mother didn’t take her kid out of the store early enough. She should have done it the minute he began hitting a stranger with the cart.

Yeah, I can’t leave a store the moment one of my kids acts up … but the minute they behaved that way with the cart, they would have lost the privilege of using it. (And been made to apologize to the person they hit.)

I think strangers have every business correcting a child when that child’s behaviour affects them, or other people, and the parent isn’t bothering to correct. If you saw a child damaging public property somewhere and the parents were nowhere to be seen or thought the behaviour was OK, don’t you think someone should say something?

Since there is no audio – I really can’t judge this video. For one, it appears as if this child knows the patron in front of him and thinks it is “funny” to slam him with the cart. He’s laughing – he’s not at all intimidated. The mother does nothing to stop him but it seems like I said – she might know that person too and doesn’t think she needs to discipline her son since he is doing it in “good fun.” (Again, just complete speculation.) The mother’s reaction is rather tame in that she simply picks up her child to comfort him and simply whisks him away once the milk hits his forehead and doesn’t become irate which is usually what happens. I would be amazed (but I guess I shouldn’t be) that a complete stranger would go to that level to teach the child a lesson. Somebody who knows the child might do something like that in retaliation thinking it is also funny.

This whole video is weird. Who is filming this and why? But, going with this isn’t fake for a moment, I too think the kid and the mom know the person in front. The kid keeps looking up at the person, acting like he’s being funny, and even when the milk gets picked up, is still looking at them with humor, not like “hey that stranger took the milk.” And as you said, the mom’s reaction isn’t one of outrage. So my guess is its the child’s other parent that does the milk dumping.

Shoegal – My first thought, too, is that the child and “stranger” know each other. The child seems to be very comfortable and gleeful with this particular “victim” of his, and the first reaction of the man is not shock and sudden movement away but a firm standing of his ground, as if he is almost expecting this behaviour from this child.

It is clear the man spoke to the child, next to the mother, so he was speaking to the mother about the behaviour. In not dealing with it she left the discipline up to the man. I was frequently hit on the ankle by both mini and regular carts by my small son (yes, he did lose his privileges each and every time; sadly, though, it didn’t prevent it from happening the next time) and I have a permanent spot on my one ankle that cannot handle another bump without instant and sharp pain. I am very skittish around all carts now, for that reason. The child in the video would have had one chance with me and that’s it. I don’t have a problem with the milk dumping. It teaches a lesson that nothing else will, for that boy, given the mother he’s got.

It takes a village and not all the village will be patient and kind. It’s a good thing for this boy to learn. He needs to respect that pushing boundaries will result in harsh consequences sometimes, because he’s not pushing those boundaries just in the safety of his loved ones. The cruelty perpetuated on him is not by that man and the milk, but by his abusively neglectful mother.

Even if the guy knows the child there’s no excuse for the child’s behavior. No, it does not take a village. I had my child and it’s my responsibility to teach her. It’s been my experience that parents who trot out the metaphorical village are the same ones who tell people don’t tell me how to raise my kid!!

I believe it takes a village because I believe children should not be constantly under parental supervision. I raised my child in a small town. As soon as she was 8, she was allowed to ride her bike all over town or go fishing off the city pier. If she misbehaved, I got a discrete call. I was grateful because if I knew about it, I could fix it. The community knew her and she knew her community. This made her safer than a child who was sequestered home all day. It also made her smarter and more aware of her surroundings.

There being no audio, we also don’t know whether or not the person being hit has asked the mother to please control her child. Agreed, though, that the response was not polite (tempting though it must have been).

When I lived in South Florida, I saw this behavior first hand. Two little girls were chasing an old lady around the store with a full size cart, repeatedly ramming it into her. When she asked the parents,both of whom were were present, to restrain the children they became very angry at the lady, said their children were just playing, and that, if she didn’t like children, she should not come to a store where there might be children.
I would have called the manager, had him view the store’s tape of what had happened and then asked him to tell the parents they could not return to the store until they were able to control their children.

To me, this appears to be staged. I seriously cannot believe that a parent would allow their child to continually ram the cart into someone’s leg. And after the kid had milk poured on his head, the parent simply whisks the kid away with NO confrontation at all?
That just doesn’t seem to add up.

It feels faked. The camera was already on them before there was any drama and the camera was being held at such a low angle anyone would have had to have been crouching on the floor to take the video. The video camera was also remarkably stationary.

You’d be surprised what I’ve seen parents letting their kids get away with. I have a very much unwanted sister-in-law that allows her psycho son get away with threatening to kill people and pulling knives on them.

It looks fake to me. The people in the background don’t seem terribly shocked by what happened. The mom nudging the kid to do it again is a red flag. And really, the camera person just happened to be perfectly positioned the whole time a few feet away ? Come on

When I’ve been the one assaulted by a random child who doesn’t know / hasn’t been taught any better, my instinct (right or wrong) is to correct the kid like I would my own child. So – no mean words, no yelling, no hitting, and certainly no pouring milk on the kid’s head.

My reaction would have been any / all of the following:

1) Bend down, hold the cart still, summon my best pained / about to cry look and say, “OW!! You hurt me! That wasn’t very nice!”
2) Bend down, hold the cart still, summon my best firm glower and say, “No. That is not what we do with our shopping carts. Stop it.”
3) Kneel down to eye level with the kid, one hand holding the cart still, one hand on the kid’s arm, and say, “No. That is not what we do with our shopping carts. Stop it.”

Any or all of these (especially #3) violate all sorts of unspoken other-people’s-kids boundaries, so replicate at your own risk, but so far the worst reaction I’ve gotten is a shocked look from parent and child and a frightened-sounding apology from a parent. I’m inclined to think I “get away with” this sort of behavior because I’ve been told I can be intimidating, especially when I switch into a mode where I care more about being effective then I do about typical social boundaries.

As there is no context to this video, it is possible that the child knows the adult in front of him. It might even be his dad, saying this is what happens to little boys who ram their shopping trolleys into people. We don’t know what the relationships are. It could even be staged for one of those ‘send in your clips and we’ll send you £250’ tv shows..

This whole thing seems staged to me. But if it were real, shame on both the mother and the stranger. I mean, it’s a little funny, in an “America’s Funniest Videos” way, but it’s hardly an appropriate reaction on the part of the stranger. And of course, the mom shouldn’t have allowed that.

Yup, came here to say this. Kid ramming stranger with a kiddie cart and laughing, several times in a row, mom standing there not doing anything, stranger pouring milk on the kid’s head… None of this looks real. And why did the mom and child only have a kiddie cart, anyway? Again doesn’t look real.

Well, if mom and child only needed a couple things, then it would make sense to just have a kiddie cart. There have been times I’ve popped into a grocery with my youngest child for just a few things, so we got a hand basket and I let her carry it (until it got too heavy). If they had kiddie carts at those stores, I’d go that route instead.

Wow….I’m honestly torn between “way to go!” and “poor kid!”.
It’s the mother’s fault that happened to het child, since it appears she is doing absolutely NOTHING to stop the bratty behavior.
Agreeing with another person above that my kids wouldn’t dare slam a cart into another person, much less over and over.
My kids aren’t perfect, but they have on occasion accidentally bumped someone in a store, and I made them apologize.

When I worked at a retail store, a grown woman slammed her cart into my back hard enough to bruise one of my kidneys when I wouldn’t stop helping the lady I was already working with (and had been for a few minutes) to go in the back RIGHT NOW and see if they had any more of the ‘American Girl’ dolls she was looking for.
I told her I would be with her in just a few minutes, I was almost finished with the other gal, and then I’d be happy to go look.
She screamed at me, and then shoved her cart into my back and walked away.
I crumpled to the floor and the nice lady I was helping, seeing I was really hurt, ran after her….yelling for someone to come help me.
She came back and said she couldn’t catch her, and by that time several employees and a floor manager ran over to help me.
Our head of security came up to me a few days later and said he went and watched the surveillance tapes to see if he (or anyone else) recognized this woman, and told me if I ever saw her in the store again to come get him immediately as I could’ve pressed charges.
I thought that was so nice of him, (he told me my manager asked him what he was doing and told him “not to bother”, and “it’s not like she got STABBED!”) and even though I never saw her again, I truly appreciated that Joe the security manager (and Iraqi war vet) went to all that trouble for me.

With “American Girl” being in quotes, I’m taking that to mean one of the non-AG but similar dolls that can be found in stores like Walmart and Target (basically, any 18″ doll which has various eye/hair/skin color combos). Especially with the manager’s attitude, that just screams “big box discount store”.

The store I worked at was Target, and it was (supposed to be) a comparable brand named “Our Generation”.
Same principle, still pricy, but not as expensive as the real thing.
The Target brand dolls themselves cost around $40.00, but the accessories and furniture were ridiculously high in price.
This “lady” breezed in two or three days before Christmas, and expected to have pick of the litter.
I got the feeling she was used to shopping in places where they hung up her fur coat and handed her a glass of Pinot noir, and where the phrase “I’ll be with you in a few minutes, Ma’am” was unheard of.
The very nice lady who I was waiting on, had come up to me 20 minutes or so prior and asked for my help.
She was recently divorced, had no family, couldn’t afford a baby sitter so she had to bring her two small kids with her to shop for their presents.
I suggested that I follow her with an empty cart, and she would pick up items for her kids and ask them (two beautiful little girls) “Would you like Santa to bring you THIS?”
If the answer was yes, she would put it back on the shelf with a cheery “Well….we’ll see!!!”, and then I pick up the item and put it in my cart.
After all the drama with the other woman, I took the cart up to customer service.
I rang everything up, and someone else wrapped them.
The lady and her daughter’s came up, and she paid for everything, telling the girls “these are gifts for people I work with….Santa is leaving yours under the tree!!!”
It worked out very well, and when she left we hugged with shared “Thank You!!!….No, no, Thank YOU!!!”

The adult should have been an adult. Taken the cart way – used his foot to stop it push it back – raise 9 types of hell and demand the management kick out the kid and his “parent”. Honestly given the age of the child pouring milk over his head could have resulted in criminal charges against the “adult”. The child would have probably be considered under the age of reason.

I saw a similar situation – and handled it differently. The kids 2 were older 10+. They were running around the store ramming their (Full sized) into carts pushed by older women. Several of the women had canes hanging off the handle of the cart and were using the cart to steady themselves. The first couple time I was to far from them to intervene. I managed to get between them and their third victim and grabbed the cart they were using. I shoved it back at them. Their “father” objected. I told him, “I have video of your delinquents assaulting two women who need canes to walk and now I’m calling 911. The Village cops have nothing to do and really enjoy running entitled spoiled nouveau-rich brats down to Harris County’s juvenile detention. They are older than 10 – and it is the Saturday – so no bail hearing until Monday. ” He grabbed his kids, abandoned his cart and took off.

The manager waited until they were gone then he said, ” You know the boundary of the Villages and Houston is a block that way. This is Houston.”

I laughed and said, “Didn’t say I was calling the Village cops. Just mentioned that they do tend to be bored. ”

Notes
I’m in Texas 10 is the age of reason younger kids can not be charged or arrested.
The Village cops are law enforcement for a group of small villages that are surrounded by Houston but their own separate towns. The villages are residential only no businesses (There are villages that have commercial property inside their boundaries but they have their own police forces). People are easily confused about justification because on some streets one side is one village the other is another village.
According to the Now You Are 10 talk that the police gave at the school were I taught said there were no Juvenile courts on weekends – but that is a different county. Not sure about Harris. I also lied about having video hoping to scare the “father”. I didn’t waste time trying to get video. If I had been with another person – I would have had one of us stop the kids and the other video.

I am beyond stunned that police come into your schools to talk about the repercussions of a child’s actions in “Now You Are 10” talks. To have to give young children a head’s up that they can now go to juvenile detention because of their age is horrifying. Both because a ten year old is still a baby in so many ways and because there must be some serious behavioral challenges in a school district that needs to take these preventative measures. So incredibly sad.

Ten year olds are babies only if they are allowed to be. I believe children should be given those type of talks. My religion teaches that 7 is the age of reason. We can’t coddle our children that much and expect them to be able to navigate college or a job when they are 18.

I am very glad that at least one state is willing to step in and punish this type of behavior for this age group.

Assault is assault, regardless of the age of the assailant, the damage has been done. If you try speaking to the parent and the parent does nothing, and you may or may not be able to physically stop the child (like the elderly women other posters have mentioned, or you have your hands full) what are you supposed to do??

A lot of people now seem to think that even kids as old as 7 can’t control themselves at the most basic level, i.e. not screaming and running in a public place (ex: a store or restaurant) or hitting others. Which, as an amateur social historian, and as an aunt and cousin, simply isn’t true. Kids as young as 4 can display really quite decent behavior in public. You just have to put in the effort to teach them, and not be afraid that expecting polite, decent behavior out of them is “crushing their spirit”.

That poor kiddo. I mean he is absolutely making a poor choice, however, I really feel for him after he gets the milk dumped on him. His mother should have taken responsibility for the situation, and the stranger should not have reacted that way. It’s hard to speculate age, but the child looks rather young.

That definitely isn’t the way to teach a kid they can’t do something. If anything it just teaches retaliation and that if someone is doing something irritating and inappropriate you can react however you see fit and respond inappropriately right back. Moreover, the people with the power to stop that situation are the adults. Sure, the stranger could have said to the child, “that hurts and isn’t appropriate” or something similar, and then protected themselves by holding the store-cart. Assuming the adult is able-bodied enough to pick up the milk and dump it on the kids head, they can certainly hold the cart from it being rammed into their legs. After addressing it directly with the mother, they should have called a manager or alerted store personnel. I’ve seen parents who do not follow the rules be removed from store property before.

I’ve seen the original video before (with audio — not that you can hear much — and the image unflipped, and personally I think it’s staged. What are the odds that a camera would happen to be recording at that moment at exactly that height?

I suppose it’s possible that the person getting his (?) legs slammed thought that the child could still learn some manners – it’s pretty obvious that the mother is past learning. Since there is no audio, we don’t know what he may have tried, like the stern word, prior to pouring the milk, and since it cut off after the mother left, we don’t know if he paid for it after pouring it. So, that leaves just someone having to clean it up and since bratty kids and oblivious parents are a problem for stores, maybe the store thought it was a good trade off?

Well that’s dumb. The kid is annoying the other shopper, okay, but put your foot up to stop the cart if telling him to stop and asking the mom to control him don’t work. You don’t just dump milk on him, come on.

This is asinine because it creates a mess for the supermarket and is a waste of milk that has not been purchased by anyone.

You speak to the parent and tell them to immediately stop their kid from assaulting you or worse case, you take the cart away to remove the object that’s actually being rammed into you. There is little to no thinking between the idea of “a way to stop this child is to dump milk on their head”. The consequences need to match the crime, so you take the cart away and if the parent comes at you, you tell them you disarmed the kid, enough said.

I agree with your comments and would like to add that if it’s not a staged video, I bet that kid thinks twice about misbehaving….not that I completely agree that dumping milk on his head was a good move either.

Wow. I just do not understand either adult in this video. The little boy is actually acting how I would expect. Now, that is not to say that he should not be disciplined. However, the mother is not acting as a parent. I can totally imagine the mother telling the other irate patron that boys will be boys, and expecting that to fly. Personally, as a mother of two boys about this little boys age, that makes me mad. Playing in mud, climbing trees, ogling bugs, talking about farts, etc. are the type of things where boys are boys. Yes, maybe one bump is a boy being a boy, but it is not something you can let go unpunished either. You, as the parent, are to teach your children common courtesy; and it does not involve ramming a stranger over and over. That is called being a brat.
The other adult is not excused in my book. Sure, the kids is annoying. Sure, the kid is a brat. However, the kid is also a direct reflection of the parenting he is receiving. Pouring the milk out on the kid makes you look foolish and childish. You are an adult, act like one. Confront the mother. The mother not doing anything? Pick your groceries up and find a different line or let them go first. Then you are out of cart range.
The lack of reaction from the mother leads me to wonder if the other patron was a relative. Excuses nothing, but explains the non-reaction.

Are we sure this is real? In my experience people who refuse to curb their children often are swift to react when their child is curbed by others. I find it strange this woman doesn’t seem to react when the person takes something from the child’s cart. And also seems very slow and tame to react when the milk is poured on the kids head. The guy behind the mom reacts with more surprise than she does.

I’m going with the ‘they knew each other’ theory others have proposed, or the theory that it was staged since the mother did absolutely nothing when he grabbed the milk. It took him a little bit to get the cap off–enough time for her to react–but her hands never move at all. Still, I thought it was funny how reserved he was with the milk bath. He loses his temper enough to dump milk on a child, but still has the presence of mind to preserve most of the milk. He splashes out just enough to make a statement, then recaps the milk and puts it back in the cart!

To me this video seems staged. No way would someone just walk away if a stranger just dumped milk on their kids head.

This reminds me when I was younger and worked at Wal-Mart. We have the bag carousels at each check out to bag purchases. Kids (and some adults) just loved to spin it round and round when I was finished using it. And their parents just let them do it. Not only was it annoying, but there was the very real possibility of little fingers getting pinched or caught, not mention injuring me or another adult because of my proximity to it. It got to the point where if there where children I would lock the carousel after each transaction, didn’t stop the child from trying to spin it though.

Another time I was working at a small mom and pop type place. A parent came in with her child, probably somewhere around 4 or 5. Her child ran behind the counter to me while mom was checking out, and when I tried to lead the kid back around the mom yelled at me that she wasn’t doing any harm. The owner kept her gun and several box cutters behind the counter. Unless you know for certain what’s back there, you probably shouldn’t let your kid run around there.

I agree with the staged. But there are rude kids and parents who would let it happen. My husband and I were on a cruise one time and standing at railing watching boat dock. My husband kept pushing into me and after the third or fourth time I turned and asked him what the deal was. Turns out kid next to him (who was 8-10 years old) was shoving my 6′ 3″ husband so hard he was hitting me! So we asked the kid to please stop shoving him. Not only did the kid not stop but he upped the ante and starts putting his hands in my husbands pockets! At that point we appealed to the parents, and pointed out how inappropriate it was for a strange boy to be putting his hands in my husbands pockets. Instead of stopping the kid they yelled at us and said that since we didn’t have kids we had no clue what was appropriate or not. If I had had milk I would have dumped it on all of them. Instead we walked away, while they talked about how they let just anyone on the cruise.

“So, dumping milk on the head of the child is, in my opinion, a cowardly choice to not directly engage the person most responsible for the child’s behavior,” may be a true statement, but I’ll bet that kid won’t bash anyone else’s legs with a shopping cart!

And as far as “not directly engaging with the person most responsible,” on my flight to Seattle last year, I VERY nicely asked this little girl (4-5 years old) to please stop kicking my seat…I made sure I was smiling and not scary at all. Her mother immediately starts shrieking at me about how DARE I speak directly to her child. I told her to tell her kid to stop kicking the seat or I’d get the flight attendants involved. You can’t win.

Which is exactly what most parents feel like. :/ Why didn’t you talk to the mom? At this age, that’s the “person most responsible.”

Now, I wouldn’t have screamed at you if you spoke to my child, but at that age, you should really be talking to the adult if they somehow haven’t noticed what the kid is doing. (I tend to keep pretty close tabs on my kids, but distractions happen.)

When I worked in retail I found that it was much more effective to talk to the kid about small unruly behaviors such as sitting down in a cart or not running. If a child was standing in a cart I would pat the cart and kindly say, “Please sit down. You don’t want to tip over the cart.” I kept it very casual and friendly. 9 times out of 10 the child sat. The parent either said nothing or turned to the child and said, “See, I told you you needed to sit.” I never once had a parent confront me about it. In fact, I started this tact because I found out early on that talking to the parent earned me a hostile reaction. I believe it felt to the parent as if I was criticizing their parenting. When I asked the child it gave them an “out” in that they could use me to reinforce their own rules. It didn’t put them on the defensive. I worked in retail for over 15 years and I bet this happened 75 times. I never had one parent react badly.

It does look like the Mom nudged the kid to do it again after the first few bumps. Personally, I would have given the mother the chance to take control of the situation and if she didn’t, I would have taken the cart away from the kid the next time he rammed me and said loudly “You do NOT push your cart into other people”.

I prefer to pour milk on delicious cereal instead of wasting it on a kid’s head. (Coco pebbles I hear you calling my name) 🙂

Hm, I am on the fence about this. The child was surely behaving badly, but pouring milk might have been a bit extreme. I am not a child-hater. But badly behaved children who hurt me (I have had kids ram a cart on me!) whose parents don’t say a word really bothers me.

This reminds me of something that happened when I was a child – not more than 10 yo., but I remember it well. My mom and I had boarded a bus, and I reached first and got 2 seats together. I sat on one, and put my hand on another for my mother (which was normal in the city I grew up in). An adult woman came, simply moved my hand, and sat there. She didn’t even move when I told her several times that I was holding the seat for my mother. I was annoyed and started elbowing her. She elbowed me back. My mother kept telling me to stop, and I got an earful from my mom once we got off the bus (she never scolded me publicly). But after I learned my lesson that day, I overheard her tell my father that it wasn’t fair on the other woman to just ignore my request, just because I was a child.

The guardian in the video should surely have done something about the child hitting adults. I hope she doesn’t try to teach the child that he can do anything, and it was the other adult’s fault to pour milk on him.

That’s what I said – my mother did punish me. She also kept telling me to stop elbowing in the bus (not that she could tell the other woman anything for elbowing me back!). I got an earful that day, and I did learn my lesson that day.

But being an adult now, I don’t like when a child’s opinion is disregarded. My parents always valued me and my opinion. I’ll never over-power a child, just because I can. If a child is holding place for his/her parent in a bus (in a place where it is common to do so), I’ll NOT push the child’s hand and sit there. Children can be bratty, and parents need to control them. But one needs to respect them too.

First ram and I would have had a hand on the cart and been letting the mom have it. Second ram, I would have picked up the entire cart and overturned it even if it meant I was buying the groceries. I would not have touched the kid, that gets you into trouble. My local store I end up with a cane sometimes and nobody ever tries a ram a cart… after this I did try this with an empty cart, and I have a flat handle cane, you can hook the handle in the front bottom of the cart (where the dog food goes) near a wheel, and put the cane just to the side of the front then push the cart over, it flips easily. Leverage. I could be standing on one foot, hanging onto my own cart, and do this. (yes I’m strange, I actually bought a shopping cart, slightly used, for photo shoot setups, and it’s gone through three moves with me)

Evil me would have wanted to shove the cart right back at the child and see how he liked it. However, this is why she is not often allowed into civilized society. The video does look staged, which I didn’t even think of when I first watched it. Ultimately, I would have spoken firmly to both the child and his mother and if that failed, I would request a manager to handle it. And as an aside, everyone has been referring to the milk pourer as ‘he’ but I thought it was a woman…does anyone else think so too?

I guess I’m supposed to be outraged that this person didn’t behave perfectly politely (and body language suggests to me that they did try addressing the child and mother verbally) and I guess it makes me an awful person that I loved the ending, but I did. No child was harmed in this video, just got a little wet and possibly some insight into consequences, while the mother had a bit of extra cleaning up to do, but somehow I have no sympathy – maybe next time she will not allow her child to hit strangers. (And actually, ramming that cart into someone like that could really hurt, especially if that person has some kind of injury, arthritis, etc).

I’d like to point out that the video was staged. It’s a short film called ‘Felix’ by Anselm Belser, and was shown during ‘Brussels Short Film Festival’ (among a few other film festivals) in 2012.
Source (you’ll need to scroll down a bit): http://bsff.be/en/2012/international-competition-6/

I’m going to agree with those who say this is fake, mainly because it seems odd that a woman who thinks her special snowflake should be allowed to do as it pleases and can do no wrong doesn’t react more strongly when the little flake has to experience unpleasant consequences for its actions.

Having said that, I will state that, IMO, one reason parents should discipline their very young children is so that others won’t be able to do so later. Would you rather be the (loving, caring) parent who stops your toddler from hitting others or the parent who has to watch a (hurt, angry) other knock your child to the floor because your child attacked them?

I don’t know, I am not sure this video is even real. Why was someone filming? Of course it’s possible that this interaction started well before, giving someone a chance to pull out their phone and start filming before the climax we see, but it seems odd. There is no audio, which may not mean fake but does make it hard to know what os really going on. We never see the adults faces, which is weird, if they were interacting you would think the filmer would shift the camera to follow the action. But, maybe they were trying to film discreetly? And the fact that nobody does anything during the time it takes the ‘dumper’ to open the milk…they seemed to struggle with it for a while, more than enough time for the parent to realize what is about to happen and act, but they just stand there and stare. This is either staged or really just odd. But, let’s just say it is real; in that case, Admin nailed it. Cowardly and even mean to do that to a child, when it is clearly the parent’s responsibility. But hopefully both child and parent learned a lesson here.

This video looks staged so I won’t waste my time judging who is or is not in the right. That said, children often behave inappropriately in stores with no correction by the parent. The offended party reacts badly by shouting at the child or even hitting it. There are multiple stories and videos of this scenario shown over and over. For example, a child was crying in Walmart and a customer hit it after telling the parent “you either shut that baby up or I’ll shut it up for you”. The customer was arrested for assault.

I just think this ridiculous video would only empower adults in this situation to engage in over the top behavior if a child offends them in a store or other establishment.

It’s too bad there aren’t many videos posted of the store, the parents, or the offended party reacting appropriately when a child misbehaves.

I’ve always thought this looks staged. It seems to be a stationary camera. Who needs a stationary camera at knee level? Also the subtle nudge from mom to kid to continue. And that mom just stands there while guy rummages through cart. And then just takes the kid out.
1) most people are pretty territorial so would get angry at someone rummaging through their cart and opening on of their items. 2) again territorial, most moms would fly into attack mode for someone “harming” their angel.

It looks to me more like someone staged this as a “here’s what we’ve all wanted to do to an unraised child being a pest at the store, but we can’t because of horrible parents so watch this reenactment of your dream and feel good by proxy”.

Assuming this is not the first reaction, and it does look like he is trying to appeal to the kid and parent to stop. As someone who easily gets injuries even when bumped into in a crowd (a dislocated shoulder) something like that would be HIGHLY dangerous to me and could easily result in permanent and crippling damage due to an invisible illness. That looks like even to a regular health person to be painful and the trolly being so low is very hard to grab and stop. If this is his reaction after asking both the kid and mother to stop I have no issue honestly. The child is physically unharmed and I can’t see how that would cause any emotional scarring. As for the clean up – it is obvious he only spilled a bit and at most a couple of droplets because it does seem less milk and something thicker. While I don’t advocate it, I would have no issue with someone defending themselves in such a way if people were not getting the point. This kid is HURTING the person and the person for all they know might have any of the many medical conditions (osteoporosis, Ehlers danlos) that such an action could be crippling and a bit of fluid on the head……yeah no issue.

I’m kind of confused here. I agree with Princess Buttercup – this looks staged.
The mother’s reaction alone is enough to convince me that this video isn’t ‘real’. If someone, ANYONE, assaulted my child in that way regardless of my child’s behaviour, I would have been visibly a LOT more ‘upset’ than this woman was. Okay, we can’t hear the audio – but body language says a lot and the reaction to the milk incident seemed totally weird.

Also – I fail to see how ANY parent can simply allow their child to consistently ram their trolley into a strangers legs. This is just not okay. There are some that may argue that this child (if in fact the video is real…) could possibly have behaviour problems and therefore unable to understand why this is wrong – but again, I just can’t agree with that. The mother just WOULD intervene. Regardless.

I’d say this is a video demonstrating how we would secretly like to react to a badly behaved obnoxious child made purely for odd ‘entertainment’ purposes. *Shrugs*

Long time reader, rare commenter. I really felt compelled to comment on this story as I feel that the man dumping milk on the child was assault. I would feel it was assault whether the victim was a child or an adult. I do feel the mother was wrong not to correct the child, and I know that the cart ramming was also an assault. I feel that the child looks to be only 5-6 years old and that therefor it is the mother’s fault for not teaching correct behavior. I know others may jump on me for my opinion, but I don’t feel that the adult man reacted appropriately. He showed the child that it is ok to respond with a physical attack when someone does something we don’t like.

Ehhh, good lesson for both the kid and the mom. Both have learned that strangers won’t necessarily put up with their crap. Unproportional response, maybe. Sometimes I have to walk around with a dislocated fibula until it can be corrected and would certainly not appreciate a cart to the leg.

There’s the fact that the quality is too good for even an iPhone – which would explain how it could be filmed at kid height.

That being said – you can see the man does try to deal with the mom first. And I’ve known plenty of moms and dads who wouldn’t care if their kid gutted the family pet on their new couch, let alone hit a random person in the legs. The kid got what he deserved if it’s not staged.